What the Organic Sector Wants From the November Election

No political party has a policy for growing organics in New Zealand. OANZ took a five-point manifesto to Parliament to change that. I read all six pages: here's what the asks mean at the checkout, and why the coming scorecard is the real story.

A Doctor's Theory of Why Modern Food Is Making Us Sick

Zach Bush spent three hours on Joe Rogan's podcast making a case that chronic disease traces back to one molecule and a broken relationship with soil. Worth sitting with.

Your Free-Range Eggs Are From Hens That Haven't Been Outside

A green sign taped to the Woolworths egg shelf says some free-range flocks have moved indoors. It doesn't name a supplier, a brand, a date or an end. Europe caps this at 16 weeks and then the eggs become barn eggs. Organic wrote its own exception. New Zealand wrote nothing at all.

Who Am I to Tell You What to Eat?

Fair question. Before you trust anything I write about food, you should know who's writing it. Twenty years of brewing, blind hop selection in the Yakima Valley, judging at the World Beer Cup, and a lifetime of asking where things come from. Here's my answer.

Why Do People Choose Organic Food?

Why do people choose organic food? Sprays, GM feed, soil biology, animal welfare, and the trust underneath it all. An honest run through every reason people pay more, including the weak ones that don't survive the evidence, and what the premium over free range actually buys you in New Zealand.

The Proprietor: Sam Neill Didn't Just Own an Organic Winery. He Meant It.

The obituaries will give you Jurassic Park. Here's what they'll skip: four certified organic vineyards, a BioGro conversion he pushed because he couldn't stomach the herbicide strip, and a final year spent fighting an open-cast gold mine in his neighbourhood.

Who Makes Woolworths Free Farmed Bacon? The Pack Won't Say.

A reader questioned the Woolworths recommendation in my bacon awards piece. Fair challenge. So I pulled the thread: one farm, a sale almost nobody covered, an anonymous factory, and a cure that burns in the pan. The welfare label is real. It also stops at the farm gate. Here's the rest.

New Zealand's Best Bacon and Ham, If You Care How the Pig Lived

Every winner at the 2026 Bacon and Ham Awards was born and raised in New Zealand. A few are free range, the best welfare you can confirm. But free range tells you how the pig lived, not what it ate, and almost no label answers the feed question. The winners worth buying, and two we left off.

Niue Honey and the Last Clean Bees in the Pacific

New Zealand sent Italian bees to Niue in the 1960s. Then varroa arrived here and tore through our hives. On the Rock, 2,400km away, the bees stayed clean. Their honey tastes of caramel and malt, comes certified organic in a rum bottle, and carries Peter Gordon's name.

The Milk You Almost Can't Buy

A vending machine on a farm road near Orewa sells something no supermarket in the country can. Certified organic raw milk sits where two rule books barely overlap. Here's what I found when I went looking for who still sells it, what it costs to comply, and the raid that reshaped the market.

Why New Zealand Doesn't Eat Its Own Organic Food

The best organic kiwifruit in the world is easier to find in Sacramento than in Tauranga. New Zealand's organic sector just hit $1.18 billion, and most of it leaves the country. Five structural reasons the domestic organic market stalled while the rest of the western world moved on.

The Part of Milk Nobody Puts on the Bottle

A cow gives milk only after she's had a calf. That one fact runs the dairy industry. The yearly pregnancies, the calf taken within a day, the bobby calves killed at four days old, the cow culled young, all of it happens out of sight. Not hidden. Just never said.